​HOW DO HOURS DEFINE US? Our finest hour, our hour of need, an eleventh hour decision.... Moments of pride and desolation are defined by this unit of time, which in itself is just sixty minutes – one of which is enough time to miss that bus, and fifteen of which will be our lifetime’s allowance of fame.... But when collected in bundles of twenty-four, these hours grow to mark the passing of a day: a rainy day, a red-letter day, or a cold one in hell. For a city like Hong Kong, renowned for its unrelenting pace and fleeting interactions, an hour seems like a fitting unit of time from which to start a collection of stories. Each hour is different, as market traders give way to commuters and school children, who give way to shoppers, diners, clubbers, and – of course – denizens of the night. Behind every narrow sub-divided window, on the first and last MTR departures of the day, below underpasses in Causeway Bay, lives are being lived. Twenty-four hours give twenty-four points of entry into the stories, characters and themes that define our city.